Relationship between the media and the governor

Hunt insists that media scrutiny can help politicians identify problems more clearly and makes them more accountable to the public. This theme of accountability reappears toward the end of the interview.

Citing this Excerpt

Oral History Interview with James B. Hunt, August 15, 2001. Interview C-0331. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Full Text of the Excerpt

JACK FLEER:

Now you mention in conjunction with that the importance of the bully
pulpit, and you have talked about it in previous sessions that we have
had. I talk about it in terms of the governor as a public leader, as a
leader of the public, trying to educate and inform and mobilize the
people. I want to ask you a few questions about components of that
particular responsibility. What was your relationship generally with the
print and electronic media as a component of governor, as a public
leader?

JAMES B. HUNT:

What was my relationship?

JACK FLEER:

How would you characterize that relationship?

JAMES B. HUNT:

Well, you have to reach the public. Basically you need to go out and have
town meetings and I had a ton of them. By the way it was interesting to
the media too.

JACK FLEER:

What was that?

JAMES B. HUNT:

It was most interesting to the media. It's the way to go
directly to the people, but the media likes the reaction. You never know
who's going to come and say what. But I understood that
it's through the media that we reach the public. I also found
that the media frequently spots problems that you don't know
are coming or at least you don't know how imminent they are.
So I used, I worked, I did things. I had events. I communicated in ways.
I did a lot of it as you know. During my first two terms I guess I had a
weekly press conference. I later decided that was not the necessary or
the best thing to do. So I had more events at which I was trying to get
a certain thing done and took questions of different kinds. But the
media is the way you reach, it's through the media that you
reach the people. The media has the job of searching and probing and
trying to find the truth and criticizing when they think
that's appropriate on the editorial page. I understood all
that. I would get mad when I thought I was unfairly criticized. But I
understood how the thing worked. My wife didn't, but I did.
By and large I was treated real fairly by the media. That's
not the point. The question is, was I able to be effective as governor
to get the message out and hear back and pull together support and get
people on the team to do big things through the media. That's
the way it has to work. I guess there are some ways that if you want to
go on line to people directly, but that's still the biggest
way you get to them. So I am sure that I used the media more than any
governor in history, maybe several times more. I'd have
regular meetings and lunches with reporters in my office and plan things
that I thought would be covered that called attention to what we were
trying to do. I don't, again I'm not sure
I'm answering this question well, Jack. The relationship was
one of understanding that the media is the way you
get to the people. I used it a lot I think successfully by and large.
Where we had problems and they jumped all over them and jumped all over
me, that was fair game. And I found out the way to deal with it which
was true with the DOT situation was not to get into a bunker mentality.
You've got problems. The only thing you can do is work them
out and then try to show that you've done that. Make changes
where changes ought to be made. I fired people on the Board of
Transportation. I put in a code of ethics. I fired a cabinet member. I
did what I had to do to straighten the thing out. The first
responsibility is to the people to do the job right and to have public
confidence and do it in such a way that the public has confidence in
you.

JACK FLEER:

Do you think it's a fair thing from your perspective as
governor for the media to have been as aggressive as they were in that
particular case?

JAMES B. HUNT:

Yeah.

JACK FLEER:

You do think so.

JAMES B. HUNT:

Yeah.

JACK FLEER:

They were in fact serving the public by making known those
issues—

JAMES B. HUNT:

Yeah.

JACK FLEER:

If not problems.

JAMES B. HUNT:

Yeah. You can say, ‘Well, they didn't present both
sides of the bridge in the Wilson County issue.’ But in the
whole scheme of things, that's pretty minor. You had some
problems. They were in the—. Mr. Williamson on my board who
was the guy that old gentleman and just wasn't sensitive to
some of the ethics issues and some other decisions that have been made
by people. They were, that's their job. You have to
understand your job and carry yours through. But you have to understand
theirs. You live in a glass house. You ought to
have transparency. People need to know what's going on. There
are problems they need to know about. If there are problems and
you're governor, you've got the job of fixing
them. That's what I did.